Member Meeting - October 2010
From Buffalo Lab, Inc.
Attendance: Matt, Ben, Curt, Jennifer, Keith, Dave, Robert, Melissa, James, Chris
Contents |
Helping the Community
what will we be doing to further the hackerspace
Halloween party 4-midnight more or less. (sat)
- Food and decorations and fun
- Can we have a prize?
- Suggested donation for reimbursement and general funds.
how can we help matt?
- Clean and organize. CLEAN AND ORGANIZE. pick up projects or it will get cleaned up.
- Leave desks usable. Leave fridge usable. Clean out extra condiments.
- Marketing and art.
- Need a good logo. Brand as "Buffalo Lab, a hackerspace"
- Matt will try to prompt more.
- Possible todo board? Use a chalkboard or whiteboard?
- Do something!
Culture: rules and policies
- Most other Hackerspaces are rather free form and loose leadership.
- Do we agree? Other spaces pressure people out, we want to be more inclusive. We need some rules, or possibly "guidelines".
- Remember we are a public space, not your bedroom
- Remember directors possibly liable for bad stuff.
- Drafting a one page guidelines type sheet.
- Ie, Can't we all just get along...
UBCON
Report from Dave and Melissa
- MiniCon went well. Presence until around 3am. Much interest. Many were unsure.
- At the con will have QA session.
- Come to our meetings 2 per month.
- Looking for someone at HS to host LAN party with UB provided equipment.
- Our helpers get Staff tickets.
- Looking for our staff users to run 1 or 2 events each.
- We will have a large presence.
- Need people to help answer Q
- Need a banner.
- Need setup help.
- Video games on projector was great draw
- Get people excited with our members.
- Mail dave with any game ideas great or small
- Melissa will run MTG booth.
- Arcade machine to booth?
- Refunction brain to bring to Con
Finances
- Raised money in 4 days for prev shortfall
- Are current until nov 1
- Approx 17 members bring 500 in. Rent utilities 986 pre month
- To help?
Consolidate?
- Reduce area to lower rent.
- Workshop mostly storage, great to have stuff but we are not utilizing space well.
- Reduce 1000 sq ft bring to 2500 sq ft reduce about 250$
- Wall storage and consolidate.
- Reorganize conference and lounge space better.
- There looks like there might be another Hackerspace? Is it real or not. Contact them?
- Reusing conference room as classroom with projector, can we rent it out?
- Sublet excess workshop space?
- Get more revenue activity.
Sublet
concerns that against building rules, and non profit cannot property manage.
- Add a lower, "supporter" tier. And send more info to them. Get income from those that
- Conference becoming class/work -> we need to pitch in to help clean and remind each other.
Information wants to be free.
Projector
- No good projector for meet up groups is a liability.
- 400$ for a decent projector
- Meetup demonstrations, movies, photo video class, online academies, lend out to other non profits, interactive video wall (art projects), wii, brain project
- If kickstarter projector, offer memberships.
- The 400$ deal ends soon.
Royalties
generate income from tshirst and caps, etc.
